The Books/Reading Thread

i recently picked up cormac mccarthy's the road so i can read it before i watch the movie and then be able to say how much better the book was
 
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What a book. I'm reading it for the second time !
 
Finished House of Leaves. Really weird. Didn't like the "end".

Well... I personally enjoy the ending, but it is one of those conclusions that doesn't really conclude. I can understand how some people would find it... underwhelming.

Out of curiosity, did you get the edition with the appendices and the Whalestoe Letters? Those letters are important to understanding some aspects Johnny Truant's character.

I understand that, but, as they say, "It's only a book"... right?

Maybe...

...or maybe it's something else. After all, "leaves" can refer to pages of a book. So if the house is made of leaves, then it stands to reason that the house is analogous (or perhaps synonymous?) with the book. And if that's the case, then when you read the book you're actually inside the house.

The dedicatory page of the book offers only a single line:

"This is not for you."
 
You might have a bit of a wait ahead of you man. It was released on November 25th (or 27th) here in the States, and no theater anywhere near where I was living was showing it. It got a severely limited release. I didn't end up seeing it until December 20th or something.
 
Well... I personally enjoy the ending, but it is one of those conclusions that doesn't really conclude. I can understand how some people would find it... underwhelming.

Out of curiosity, did you get the edition with the appendices and the Whalestoe Letters? Those letters are important to understanding some aspects Johnny Truant's character.

I do, and I read about half of them. I'll probably continue because I noticed that Pelafine definitely goes pretty fucking crazy, :lol:

I think the book begs a lot of questions, and I like the idea of the book itself as a labyrinth. I also love what Navidson ends up doing on his return back... :cool: so meta.

However, one of my main problems is that it's too difficult to believe what ANY of the narrators say. They are all incredibly unreliable and it's hard to really comprehend any substance there at all if everyone is just bullshitting and everything is fiction.
 
yeah there's a lot of talk on Zampano just bullshitting the whole thing. There are a couple of times when he "accidently" slips in "I" rather than "he". And it's rather obvious that Johnny Truant is the most unreliable narrator ever.
 
If you have the newer edition with the collage on the first page, it seems obvious Zampano is bullshitting a lot or all of it, esp. since the place apparently doesn't even exist and according to JT no one's heard of the shit he's talking about, etc.
 
^^The scary thing about House of Leaves is not so much the events which are described, but the way in which fear propagates itself, and in that sense it is the subjective reactions of the characters that is important, rather than the objective question of "what happened". Ie, Zampano creates a fictional work about the terrifying experience of Navidson, and that work consumes both him and later Johnny Truant, and ultimately us.
 
Absolutely. I need to buy a new copy. I lent it to a friend about a year ago and it's been sitting on the back of his toilet; but he refuses to give it back because he says he really likes it, it's just taking him forever to finish. I should probably just get a new copy and not risk whatever germs have gotten into it from his bathroom.
 
I need something to read so I purchased "House of Leaves". Anxious for it's arrival. I need to pay off my library fine and utilize that more often.